Heart unit battle promoted with eye-catching lorry signs
CAMPAIGNERS fighting to save specialist heart services at Glenfield Hospital have a new mobile weapon in their social media armoury.
A Leicestershire logistics firm, C S Ellis Holdings Ltd, has painted up its fleet of lorries with the Hold on to our Hearts logo.
One of the vehicles, FJ64 VBN, will be covering the Hinckley area and people are asked to take snaps of the van and post them to the hospital’s accounts on Twitter with hashtag #saveourhearts or upload them to Facebook.
John Adler, chief executive of University Hos- pitals Leicester NHS Trust, which runs Glenfield, said: “We have launched our social media campaign to encourage as many people as possible to have their say and we are doing this in numerous ways. One of the most exciting is that a local business C S Ellis Holdings Ltd has painted its fleet of lorries with our campaign information.
“The lorries will be driving around the East Midlands area and we would encourage you - when safe to do so - to take a photo, let us know where you have seen them and tweet #saveourhearts or post them to our Facebook or Twitter pages.
“Let’s get these pictures shared and retweeted as many times as possible to drive awareness across the whole region.”
Glenfield is home to the East Midlands Congenital Heart Centre which offers specialist heart care to children and adults.
NHS England has suggested it will stop commissioning these services at Glenfield due to the unit not meeting quality standards - mainly around the number of operations being performed.
A public consultation is now underway.